Poll: Where should the Title/Artist/Album wording be displayed - overlaid over Cover Art or below it?

Where should the Title/Artist/Album wording be displayed?

651 members have voted

1. Where should the Title/Artist/Album wording be displayed - overlaid over Cover Art or below it?

It's great just the way it is, no need to change anything

43

It's fine where it is, but I'd prefer the boxes to use the current colour scheme and have rounded corners to match the overall theme

59

I would prefer a user-selectable option to allow the wording to be displayed underneath the cover art rather than obscuring it (for example, at the bottom of the scrolling navigation bar area)

158

I'd definitely like the option to display the wording below the cover art, but if the user does choose the overlaid boxes mode then they should match the overall theme & colour scheme - i.e. both (2) and (3) above

277

I really hate it, I want to see just the cover artwork without ever having it obscured by overlaid text

Recommended Posts

A lot of people in the main discussion thread for build 790 have been saying that they don't like the way that Title/Artist/Album text is currently overlaid in solid black boxes obscuring the lower-left of the album artwork. This occurs in both the main Player Screen and also in Grid View library lists. I thought a poll might be interesting to crystallise those views, and gauge what the overall userbase really thinks - maybe the majority are happy just the way it is?

For clarity, we're talking about the black boxes containing the wording "Breakfast in America" and "The Very Best of Supertramp" in this sample image:

This is not binding of course, but it'd be interesting to see the results.

Share on other sites

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Imo , cover art shouldnt have anything on it. Exception might be only random and shuffle transparent buttons. However , i dont think anyone would watch cover art closely. But seeing it clear is just something i would prefer over other options.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

A lot of people in the main discussion thread for build 790 have been saying that they don't like the way that Title/Artist/Album text is currently overlaid in solid black boxes obscuring the lower-left of the album artwork. This occurs in both the main Player Screen and also in Grid View library lists. I thought a poll might be interesting to crystallise those views, and gauge what the overall userbase really thinks - maybe the majority are happy just the way it is?

For clarity, we're talking about the black boxes containing the wording "Breakfast in America" and "The Very Best of Supertramp" in this sample image:

This is not binding of course, but it'd be interesting to see the results.

Andre

For me they just need some rounding and matching to the current theme however since many people want nothing cluttering their album art .. hence ive selected the 4th option

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

If it so happens that there's no option to move the text away from the cover when the final release comes I am going to cry. (not really)

I do see how this interface feels less cluttered. But covers just aren't made for this… Sometimes they aren't a square. Sometimes they have text in them. Sometimes they have the main elements of the picture right where the overlay is now! And I will notice every single time it fails, and then I'll cry. So please, please, please give us an alternative scheme.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I agree that there should be a way to merge the track name with the meta. Perhaps show track normally and then allow clicking to display additional album, meta and ouput info. Then have a 3-second timer to return the display to the track name. The font would need to be larger and possibly put on 2 lines.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Ideally the Album Art shouldn't have an overlay with information that is already offered BY the album art.
On the other hand, not all songs have an album art (and IIRC Poweramp still doesn't auto-search for missing album art).

So my take is this: First of all, forget the boxes.
If you HAVE to have text overlaid on top of an image, go subtitles style. That is, white text with a THIN black outline (could also be colored as per the background). That would be a lot less distracting than now.

However ideally I would also prefer the option to completely HIDE overlays with information that the album art already offers.
The proper way to do this programmatically would mean that Max should first have to check if there is indeed an album art and then decide whether to show the overlay, but a quick-and-dirty approach to this would be to simply change the ORDER that Max overlays the various objects.
Specifically, if the album art is overlaid last and OVER the text overlays then the text is still there but invisible. In songs with no album art the text overlays are overlaid last and thus visible.

EDIT: I forgot to clarify that the above are for the Playback screen, the grid view library list is jsut great the way it is!

Lastly, the Song title (which obviously isn't mentioned in the album art) could appear bellow it or where the metadata currently are.

Link to post

Share on other sites

— Yeah, no. I'd rather have full black background like in the screenshot… That sounds terrible…

Unless the font was absolutely beautiful, that's not going to look very nice. And if you were to use another font, how are you going to handle titles with weird unicode characters? Noto will do just fine, but it's really not that pretty. And using a more good-looking font would most likely just end up using Noto as fallback for anything outside latin characters. I like my ñ's and my CJK how they are now, all in a similar font.

Link to post

Share on other sites

Song/album Name is already at the right place. Please make it fit in single box.. Making like unlike button smaller and placing it left of the box in up down fashion. And please three dot button at right side of the box. And both lines at the center of the box. And whole thing should look like visualization panel that we see at the top of the screen . And should match theme and transparency same as the shuffle, sleep timer etc button.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I just updated my Poweramp v3 to the latest version and i realized that in this new uptate song tags like song name and album is written and displayed at down left of the album art cover while playing the song and unfortunately it really ruins the beauty of the albumart!

I wish it was possible that there was an option in the setting menue to remove the displayement of song tags from down left of the albumart in the new default skin introduced at the latest update of Poweramp(there is an option to remove displayment of like/dislike icons from the album art but it is not possible to remove song tags like song name and album and artist name displaying on the album art while playing the song at player UI)

I think it would be better to show the tags of the now playing song like before with a very smaller font and displaying it somewhere out of albumart mybe below the albumart without overlaying it

But now all these features are removed from Poweramp in the latest update

And also at previous versions of Poweramp i could adjust the albumart zoom and i myself always used to set it on 1.02x zoom but now i see that this feature is removed from poweram in the latest update

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I think it looks messy, it obscures nearly half the album cover along with the buttons, I just think it makes the now playing screen look far too cluttered. On a side note, Im also not a fan on showing album name before artist, especially without the marquee (scrolling text) effect for long fields as the artist tag gets wiped out on compilations with really long-winded names. This is the opposite of practical.

Buttons I can deal with over the album art if they're transparent/hidden until tapped like the Poweramp 2.x layout.

As an extra note, while we're on the subject of keeping album art in full view, i am not a fan of cutting the corners off the artwork to round it off (at least on the now playing screen). It looks ok elsewhere but I think that should be down the user's preference.